What a stupid idea for an article. I dont think anyone needed this spelled out for them.

When it comes to most media, there are plenty of examples of things that do, and don't age well.

If we took a sampling of movies from 2001, we could find one or two good ones that are going to hold up, the rest is all garbage, though it may have been lauded at the time. Same goes for music, so it's no shock to see it applied to other media.

Oh come one now, we'd be stupid to think that now that MS came up with a way to deliver software to people that they can make money off of they would abandon the other routes. For example, with the Xbox it's not like they abandoned PC gaming! Oh wait, that's exactly what happened.

It won't happen at first, but you never throw the frog into the Boiling pot of water, you put the frog in luke warm water and bring it to a boil, lest they make a mess.

MS does have a lot tied up in enterprise, but that won't stop them from squeezing out the part of the market they don't like to try and get them in line with the way they want things to be done.

We all know what happens to companies that ignore what their consumers want when demand is this overwhelming.

Agreed, but I don't know of anyone with a desktop OS who is asking for this, which is exactly the problem with Windows 8 (as a dektop OS.)

As people are also keen to point out, enterprise is good business for them, and windows 8 wasn't really built to cater to them at all, and while it may offer some things that might help in that environment, it also invites a host of other issues. I don't know of any IT professionals who are looking forward to 8.

Ruffiana wrote on Sep 20, 2012, 14:22:Apart from the 'keeping the brand' part, what's the big deal? Kickstarting money won't publish, market, distribute, and do all of the behind the scenes wheeling and dealing to get a boxed game on the shelf of Walmarts and GameStops of the world. There's still unarguably a market for boxed games. There's a market, money to be made, and for all of the shitty things that publishers have done to the game industry, knowing how to make money with a complete game ready to go into a box and be sold is not one of the problems.

Asking for a portion of the profits from those sales isn't unreasonable. It's still a huge investment of time and resources to publish a finished game.

Demanding onwership of the IP to publish a game you haven't paid to develop is pretty greedy. That's an entrenched mindset from decades of an established business model where the publisher is fronting and advance so a game can be made in the first place.

Yeah. Offloading risk directly onto the customer and developer with none yourself, and then acquiring the fruits of their labor, what's malicious about that!?

There is this new thing called digital distribution, most Kickstarters (beyond rewards) forgo physical copies of their games altogether. If you're making a PC game (as obsidian is in this case) you're cutting yourself out of a very small margin of the market by going digital only, and arguably you might be able to net more profit due to no cost associated with publishing of that manner. This applies to many platforms, and there on all these platforms there are digital-only titles that are quite successful. They don't need EA/Activision/Whoever to get the job done, and there are plenty of titles that exist and prove that point.

Game Devs/Publishers always 'lament' the fact that the only things that seem to do well is established IPs. By trying to go this route they can offset the risk of a new IP onto everyone who isn't them, and they get a new IP. They know they need to get new IPs because they can only squeeze so much out of those rocks and they have terrible ideas when it comes to new games and certainly don't encourage creativity, because the people running their show are businessmen first and gamers it seems, a distant second.

Bad Dos wrote on Sep 17, 2012, 13:22:DA2 was a totally different game from DA:O and really should never have been called DA2.

That would have saved a lot of bad blood. GW1 and GW2 same thing. Fallouts.... etc.

DA1 imo wasn't good at anything. Way to weak of a system for turn/pause base.DA2 was good at only action.

So in my world it wasn't ever an amazing franchise.

The biggest news and this goes all the way back... Is they are finally going to have expansive open lands instead of a city block and load. Their games have zero adventure to them.

Now are they going to put coop back in? It sucks when all your predecessors had it and you move forward and it's then taken out. Reminds me of Madden bull shit.

"I have not green lit one game to be developed as a single player experience."

You bet they're considering putting coop in, though it won't be what you want. Imagine the blandness that is me3 co-op in the Dragon Age universe!

Undoubtedly, Bioware can't wait to tell you more about the co-op game mode they put in the game despite peoples protests or lack of interest. It'd be challenging for them to try and monetize you enjoying the actual game alongside a friend, so they'll avoid it. It certainly wouldn't be added for the games/players benefit.

Bad Dos wrote on Sep 17, 2012, 13:22:I was really hoping they fired that "push a button something awesome happens" guy, but from what you quoted it doesn't appear to be that way.

DA2 was a totally different game from DA:O and really should never have been called DA2.

There was a bunch of hilarious quotes and general idiocy surrounding DA2. Some of my favorites:

- A writer from the game actually saying "Gigglesquee"- ...when you push a button, something awesome happens!- We wanted to hotrod the Dragon Age gameplay. (I love my RPGs with some vroom vroom thanks fellas)- Players didn't seem to care about the Origin stories so we won't be using them again- One of the writers didn't like "gameplay" and just wanted to see the story. Someone actually had this opinion, worked on the game and even got to talk to the press, mind boggling.- Too many David Gaiderisms to count. They really need to muzzle this clown before DA3, he upset so many people by hanging around the forums and just dropping shitty info about the game then getting all uppity when people would dare to question design direction or choices.

Bioware also voraciously defended the game which didn't help considering its many, many faults.

Which is exactly the problem. It seems people like laidlaw didn't really like DA:O, but keep insisting that if they tweak a few things about what DA2 offered people will like it. He's dead set on convincing everyone he made a better game, and I think da3 will go towars tweaking the da2 formulae (with some changes of course, there is no reason to think they will keep the narrative style)...If you think companion armor is a pressing issue (that was made into an issue in da2, by willingly taking steps back with customization.) then clearly nothing is really going to get fixed in this game.

"This game is being made by a lot of the same team that has been working on Dragon Age since Dragon Age: Origins"

The same thing can be said about da2, that didn't instill any confidence in what was being shown.

nin wrote on Sep 15, 2012, 13:00:Just got up...they've crossed a million in around 24 hours. That's astounding...I honestly thought the KS craze was starting to wind down a little, so this is a nice surprise.

Total non-offical guesswork: Based on KS lagging in the middle and then picking up at the end (and that basically right now, they've hit their goal and I'm guessing that might cause others to just wait for a release and not kick in), I could easily see it going to 1.5 or 2 million plus, by the time it's over. And that's on the very conservative side...

Yeah, with DFA and wasteland 2 doing about 3 mill each, I'm going to venture a guess and say they surpass that...as to how much, Im not sure.

Mashiki Amiketo wrote on Sep 14, 2012, 19:33:The ones I can remember are: pause on combat, on enemy found/spotted, ammo/weapon ineffective, on hit(surprise), end of turn/round, character death, enemy killed. I think there are two more.

Ah, yeah, you have a much better memory than I =).

The ammo/weapon ineffective was nice, too. I can still remember Minsc saying "I hit, to no effect!" and Imoen "My weapon does nothing!"

As an aside, I always really enjoyed the old paladin, Keldorn's, critical hit exclamation of "Torm take you!". Giant Hair Crossbow... kpow!

you forgot the rest of the Minsc quote, and the best part! "I need a bigger sword."

Creston wrote on Sep 14, 2012, 17:08:One thing I'm a little worried about: Avellone and someone else are working with Fargo on Wasteland 2. So is he going to work on both projects at once? Is he going to finish Wasteland 2 first? Is he going to just stop working on that?

...

Creston

Maybe I missed it, but they also didn't discuss a time frame.

Yeah, that's a good point. I doubt Avellone would walk out on his promise to help with Wasteland 2 (especially since it was a stretch goal, so I'm pretty sure he's getting PAID to do so.) They may just want to get the money in and get started with the design and some tools etc.

Creston

It occurs to me the estimated delivery date on the rewards section is Apr 2014, so I guess that's when they plan to have it out.

ViRGE wrote on Sep 14, 2012, 17:20:Am I the only one that finds Obsidian using Kickstarter to be a bit repugnant? They're an established developer - they should be going to a publisher and doing it right, not hitting up gamers for money before they've even begun. It's like a millionaire panhandling.

It's almost like they find publishers to be as annoying as we perceive them to be.

I don't see how kickstarter campaigns and Panhandling are similar. There is risk certainly but provided everything goes well you'll see a return. Whether or not your happy with it though, that's another matter entirely.

Creston wrote on Sep 14, 2012, 17:08:One thing I'm a little worried about: Avellone and someone else are working with Fargo on Wasteland 2. So is he going to work on both projects at once? Is he going to finish Wasteland 2 first? Is he going to just stop working on that?

Mad Max RW wrote on Sep 14, 2012, 15:54:Eh, the weakest part of Baldur's Gate and especially Planescape Torment was the real time with pause combat. These type of games work best when turnbased.

I actually prefer the pause system over turn-based combat because it feels more realistic to me. You can pause it and give them all their commands then watch it action instead of spending more time taking turns attacking.

Just my opinion though! I still don't mind turn-based games (and backed Wasteland 2 as well) but prefer to pause to give orders.

I like it too. I can see the arguments against it when trying applying it to D&D, for example, but I don't consider the method flawed at all.